by Spoiler Alert! This article contains spoilers of "Sunday's Illness"!!!
“Sunday’s Illness” (La enfermedad del domingo) is a Spanish psychological drama film directed by Ramón Salazar, released in 2018. It stars Bárbara Lennie and Susi Sánchez, and explores themes of abandonment, forgiveness, and the complex emotional bond between a mother and daughter.
Anabel is a wealthy woman living a seemingly perfect life. Thirty-five years ago, she abandoned her daughter Chiara when the girl was just eight years old. One day, Chiara unexpectedly reappears and makes a strange request: she wants to spend ten days alone with her mother in a remote house. Anabel, restless but intrigued, agrees, hoping to make amends for the past.
As the days go by, the emotional tension between them intensifies. Chiara doesn’t seem to want a traditional reconciliation; her motivations are mysterious and tied to deep-seated pain. Through silence, small gestures, and subtle exchanges, their broken relationship is slowly unraveled. Later, it is revealed that Chiara is suffering from a chronic and painful disease. Anabel tries to help in any way she can, but Chiara insists she is constantly tired.
The film unfolds at a quiet, introspective pace, with minimal dialogue and a strong emphasis on mood, atmosphere, facial expressions, and inner worlds. In the end, Chiara asks Anabel for either one last favor or to leave. Anabel leaves abruptly and meets Matthieu, Chiara’s father. Matthieu admits he suggested the idea at first, and then Chiara refused to accept his help. Then he tells Anabel that Chiara only agreed to go forth with such an idea if she was to carry it out. Anabel accepts and goes back to Chiara’s house. She tells Chiara she has to be strong one last time, and they go to the lake. They swim naked, embracing each other one last time before Anabel fulfills Chiara’s wish of getting drowned – hence, freed from her suffering. This film portrays an understanding of love, loss, and redemption.
Why did Chiara want to spend 10 days with her long-lost mother?
I think Chiara wanted to do so because she knew she was dying, and she didn’t have much time left. In a way, her mother abandoning her and not even coming back to see her once left things unresolved. A sort of unfinished cycle, leaving Chiara wondering many things: What if Anabel had never left? Would she have become an addict if her mother had never abandoned her? Years of dealing with pain and grief, would it have been the same feeling? And most importantly, what is Anabel like? Who is she?
At the end of the movie, Chiara admits to her mother that she understands why she left. Even though she finally understood why she left, this doesn’t mean she fully knew her reasons or how she was as a person. Not even what her personality is like. As children, we grow up with a certain image of our parents; we think we know them, but we don’t. As soon as we become teenagers, we start looking at our parents’ flaws and understanding them on a deeper level, but we still have blind spots. We are too caught up in our own resentments against them, and we haven’t faced how brutal life can be. Once we leave our parents’ house, we understand them from a new lens. All that time, they had been young people struggling to stay afloat and raise children.
In my case, I even realized my parents were almost children struggling to raise other children. Just as my parents did, many people married in their early twenties and had children at a young age. I can’t imagine myself having kids at this age. I’m barely getting to know myself. I have spent years between my late teens and early twenties going to therapy and healing old wounds, and I have tried to end the same pattern of harmful behaviors that everyone in my family has. People like Anabel can be lost too; they don’t know who they are, and they are desperately trying to get through life’s hardships, even though they have a blurry mind and carry emotional baggage that keeps dragging them down.
Chiara Was Ready to Let Go
There is a scene that I can’t stop thinking about, which is when Chiara tells Anabel she has forgiven her and that she’s not resentful. I keep coming back to Chiara’s words because Anabel never showed up once after she abandoned her, never mind asking for forgiveness. How can you forgive someone who didn’t ask for it?
As people, we often forgive people who didn’t ask for forgiveness, especially our parents. How can we do so? We forgive after years by trying to understand their background. It’s easier to empathize with someone’s hurtful actions if we consider their motivations. Chiara forgives her mother because, as she previously said, she understood why she left. Anabel was a young woman trapped in a relationship she didn’t feel comfortable in, someone who felt lost and was hungry to discover the world, to get more from life. Chiara’s conclusion about Anabel wasn’t wrong. Anabel admitted to Matthieu that she left because she wanted more. In the end, she is also honest about having found more; she got more, but the pain never went away. We want more things, more money, more power as a distraction or as if that was going to satisfy the lack of self-acceptance we deal with every day.
Why do we forgive someone who didn’t ask for it?
We do so for ourselves. For our healing journey. We have to consider that everyone faces hardship and processes their grief in different ways; everyone is entitled to do so. Each one of us has a path, and many of us forgive those who didn’t ask for it because it is a way of letting go of the resentment or the hate that keeps holding us back. Many people say, “I forgive, but I never forget”. However, I would argue that it is rather convenient to forgive and forget. If we don’t forget, we keep coming back to reimagining what happened and replaying the pain in our minds, often clinging to such pain. I would argue that to heal, you need to let go for your own good. Pain drags us down, but of course, I’m coming from a certain place of privilege because I’ve been able to spend a lot of time and resources on healing and therapy. And as I said, no one is obliged to face their pain in a specific way. Chiara reminds me of my process of forgiving my mom. If I clung to what happened and the details of what she did to me, I would keep remembering every little detail that hurt me, infuriated me, disappointed me, and also contributed to hating myself for what happened, because I would keep wondering –What did I do to deserve this? The reality is that none of us does anything to deserve mistreatment from our parents; we are rather part of a bigger chain of unresolved trauma, which is also passed down through generations. And we can’t blame our parents. Our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents didn’t have the resources that we have to start a path of improvement and healing. Not only was mental health taboo and kept secret years ago, but our grandparents or great-grandparents faced horrible times, surrounded by war, famine, or political instability that made them leave their countries. I’m not saying there aren’t any current wars or political abuse; however, there aren’t as many as there used to be.
Chiara had faced her pain, run away from it, and inevitably faced it again. The pain from being abandoned and feeling unwanted. She even admitted to having dealt with addiction and consumption of substances as detrimental as heroin. She tried to heal and asked Anabel to stay with her for only 10 days, as one last attempt at closure and redemption. Perhaps, it was one last attempt at letting go of this world and all the suffering it comes with before passing away. One last painful yet necessary goodbye.
